The resource-full teacher

Some of you may remember the pre-Internet days when if you didn’t subscribe to a mailed publication, you had to trek to a public or university library to catch up on your reading on science topics. I must confess that for me back then, it was difficult to find the time to spend a few hours in the library (plus travel time) to find the publications and to read them right there and then.

But now, it’s easy to bring selected resources right to your computer. Many organizations, institutions, and agencies have elecronic resources that they share, free of charge, just for signing up. The subscriptions give you options for the format (newsletters delivered via e-mail, notices that are linked to a website with the information, RSS feeds, and/or podcasts). Check the sites of your favorite museum, university or college science departments, or scientific agencies to see if they offer newsletters or RSS feeds.

Here are some e-mail based newsletters that I subscribe to and that you may want to take a look at:

• Edutopia News and Technology in Education are both from the George Lucas Educational Foundation’s Edutopia website. This is one of my favorites for seeing teachers and students in action. Click on the E-newsletters or RSS links at the top of the page to get started.
• If you’re a member, of NSTA, you already get the newsletters. If you’re not, you can still sign up for them. There is also a link for you to check the e-mail address that is on file for you. This is also where you sign up for the NSTA listserves.
• I also like SmartBrief from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development ASCD). It has educational news on a variety of topics from newspapers and professional publications. You don’t have to be a member to subscribe to this service!
• Get updates from the National Science Foundation via e-mail and/podcsts or RSS feeds. You can select specific topics (e.g., Biology, Geosciences, Education) and you can indicate how often you want the updates (immediately, daily, weekly, monthly – I selected daily so that my inbox is not cluttered up). The link to sign up is right on their home page.
• Depending on your interest level, in-depth report, daily summaries, weekly summaries, and category-specific reports are among the options from Scientific American.
• Sign up for Breaking News from NASA. There are options for immediate, daily, weekly or weekly updates plus options to get podcasts, images, and other agency newsletters.

How do you handle this information? If you don’t want to clog up your school e-mail account or the one you share with others at home, you can set up a yahoo, hotmail, or gmail account (for free) just for these these messages. All of your reading materials will be in one place! However, some schools do not let teachers check e-mails other than the school one, so you may need to check if you can access these other mail sites at school. If you do sign up for a resource, be sure to read the fine print, especially if it is from a commercial entity. On some, you must opt out of receiving other materials or of having your email “shared” with others.

Do I read everything in these newsletters? No, I’ve leared to be a gourmet rather than a glutton! I scroll down and look at those whose title or summary sounds interesting or relevant. And sometimes I look at articles on topics I know little about, just to sample a new topic to learn more.

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